Apple courting Chinese developers to strengthen iOS in China

The company increasingly sees China as a major market for growth.

Apple is doing its best to make it clear that it takes the Chinese market seriously, and another recent sign is the Thursday release of a Chinese language version of Start Developing iOS Apps Today. The online guide, written by Apple's internal Developer Publications group, is designed to help developers get started making their own apps for Apple's mobile platform. In addition to translating the guide into Chinese, Apple has included a feedback form encouraging questions and comments from a growing number of iOS developers based in China.

Apple has long supported Chinese users of its mobile devices, even before the iPhone was officially available in China. Beginning with the release of iOS 2.0 in mid-2008, Apple included a couple different ways to enter Chinese language characters, including Pinyin romanized input as well as a novel handwriting-based input. Nearly a year later, Apple launched the iPhone 3G in China on the country's third-largest carrier, China Unicom.

More recently, iOS 6 added several new features for Chinese users, including mixed Pinyin-English input, iCloud-based syncing of custom dictionary words, and integrated support for Chinese Web services like Baidu (search), Youku (YouTube), and Sina Weibo (Twitter).

Chinese input on iPhone.

The company is planning its biggest product launch in China during the next week or so. The iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad go on sale in the country tomorrow, and the iPhone 5 is set to go on sale on Friday, December 14. iPhone 5 pre-orders have already reportedly topped 100,000 units on carrier China Unicom. During the launch of the iPhone 4S in January, huge crowds swarmed Apple Stores, ultimately resulting in riots after police ordered Apple to delay opening its stores over safety concerns.

It's an increasingly important market for Apple, with over 700,000 potential smartphone users and perhaps more potential tablet users. In recent financial earnings calls, Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedlypointedto China as a huge area of growth for the company. For fiscal 2012, 15 percent of Apple's revenue came from sales of iPhones, iPads, and Macs in China—a total of $23.8 billion.

"[This] is really phenomenal when you think about it," Cook said. "That's up over $10 billion year on year."

Given Apple's increased focus on the Chinese market, it's no surprise that the company is working to better support developers in that country. The App Store got off to a strong start in late 2009, despite the fact that it required a credit card issued by a Chinese bank (relatively rare at the time), prices were listed in US dollars, and most apps only had descriptions in English.

Still, the large catalog of apps available in the App Store is often cited as one prominent benefit of the iOS platform overall. It only makes sense that Apple would want to stock the App Store in China with apps developed by Chinese developers for Chinese users. That should make the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch even more attractive to the rising middle class in a country with a population estimated at over 1.3 billion.

Too late, Apple. Microsoft already locked in on Chinese developers years ago while they were still //BUILD/-ing W8 and WP7.

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"Apple has long supported Chinese users of its mobile devices, even before the iPhone was officially available in China."

Besides the obvious implications of the black market, exactly what mobile devices did Apple have to support before the iPhone? Isn't the iPhone Apple's first mobile device? (assuming that mobile = telecommunication)

If you're going to relate Youtube and Twitter with Chinese counterparts, then you might as well have also done it for Baidu and Google.

Keep trying, Chris.

Except Google in China will redirect you to the Google.hk portal and is not outright blocked and replaced with a clone. It's why Google still has ad market share in China even though some of its services being hosted directly from the US can be flaky or non-usable without tweaking your hosts file or just using a VPN.

Too late, Apple. Microsoft already locked in on Chinese developers years ago while they were still //BUILD/-ing W8 and WP7.

Quote:

"Apple has long supported Chinese users of its mobile devices, even before the iPhone was officially available in China."

Besides the obvious implications of the black market, exactly what mobile devices did Apple have to support before the iPhone? Isn't the iPhone Apple's first mobile device? (assuming that mobile = telecommunication)

India, Russia and China don't buy software good luck, if you want to pirate software however.

LIke everyone else, urban Chinese are happy to buy software if it is cheap and convenient.

The iOS App Store is doing well here. Even if you're in the "lower-middle-class" like most urban Chinese (earning US$20-30k per year), you can afford to pay 5 or 6 RMB for an app.

In the countryside (and among migrant workers) it's a different matter, but no company is targeting that demographic.

I'm not sure about what region in China you're talking, but where I live (north east China) 20-30k USD is much more than "lower-middle-class" income. To give you an example a software engineer with University degree and a couple of years experience at my company makes about 16k including bonus before taxes. And this is considered a rather good salary, certainly above "lower-middle-class" and I live in a modern, second tier city and not in a rural area.

Nevertheless I agree that the urban middle-upper class is very fond of Apple products and that there is a huge market to be tapped by Apple. From my personal observation (read: anecdotical) every Chinese that can afford a smartphone will have either an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy; that's about all the smartphones I see around here.

And I was surprised to see that the App-store is very well stocked with native Chinese apps already, with the ratio between paid and free apps more or like the same as I was used from Europe. In general iOS goes very well with Chinese.

If you're going to relate Youtube and Twitter with Chinese counterparts, then you might as well have also done it for Baidu and Google.

Keep trying, Chris.

...what? He's just trying to relate the services offered by Chinese companies Baidu, Youku, and Sina Weibo to the same services offered by US companies Google, YouTube (now part of Google), and Twitter.

While Google's chief product is search, they now have their fingers in so many pies - Android, Chrome, and YouTube come to mind - that simply saying a company offers Google's services is ambiguous, since it could mean it only offers one of those services, some of those services, or all of those services.

Too late, Apple. Microsoft already locked in on Chinese developers years ago while they were still //BUILD/-ing W8 and WP7.

Quote:

"Apple has long supported Chinese users of its mobile devices, even before the iPhone was officially available in China."

Besides the obvious implications of the black market, exactly what mobile devices did Apple have to support before the iPhone? Isn't the iPhone Apple's first mobile device? (assuming that mobile = telecommunication)

If you're going to relate Youtube and Twitter with Chinese counterparts, then you might as well have also done it for Baidu and Google.

Keep trying, Chris.

You obviously don't know what you are talking about - most Chinese are still on Windows XP, and could care less about W8 or WP of any flavor. BTW, Baidu is also part of the mix in Apple offerings so not sure what your point is. As to mobile, there were no real smartphones before the iPhone. Period.

but where I live (north east China) 20-30k USD is much more than "lower-middle-class" income.

That is what most qualified workers with a five to ten years of experience make in both cities. A fresh graduate might make US$10-15k, but add in a few years experience, and if you're not earning in excess of RMB100,000, you're doing something wrong. The average entry-level document-shuffler in a provincial department office earns around that, as do most police officers.

Quote:

Nevertheless I agree that the urban middle-upper class is very fond of Apple products and that there is a huge market to be tapped by Apple.

Indeed they are. Moreso than even back home in Australia.

Quote:

In general iOS goes very well with Chinese.

The text-entry is still a fair bit behind what is available on the desktop, but it's getting there.

That is what most qualified workers with a five to ten years of experience make in both cities. A fresh graduate might make US$10-15k, but add in a few years experience, and if you're not earning in excess of RMB100,000, you're doing something wrong. The average entry-level document-shuffler in a provincial department office earns around that, as do most police officers.

Well, from my gut feeling I still would say a >100k RMB (> 16k USD) qualifies for better than lower-middle-class, but this is hardly the point :-)As I mentioned in another thread today the salaries and wages are growing rapidly at least in the field of industry I'm involved with and sooner than later the 20k - 30k will be the norm and not the exception. Even if we assume only 10% of the Chinese have sufficient disposable income to buy consumer electronics right now, this already makes for more than 100mio potential customers. Apple trying to develop their App-store in China as fast as possible does absolutely make sense for me. Given that Google has problems to gain traction in China, I can certainly see that Apple considers China as one of their future core markets. And as everywhere else people like to have a well developed App store with apps in their native language.

In terms of %, the middle class with income to spend on iOS/Android apps is low.

But in terms of sheer numbers, 10% of 1 billion people is 2x the entire population of Canada.

Also the custom in China is for people to marry and move in with the groom's parents. No rent, no mortgages, no daycare, no retirement homes and not much income taxes. Hence 10K in China is more like 50K in the U.S.